La disclosure della tecnologia nei bilanci. Informazione finanziaria o non finanziaria?

[Machine translation] Technology is becoming increasingly important over time in terms of expenses and investments made by companies and represents, due to the implications it may have in terms of opportunities and risks on business life, one of the greatest challenges that companies are called to face. Faced with this reality, with this research we want to begin to answer the following questions: what information is, or should be, given to stakeholders about technology and its impact (also in terms of risks) on society, ensuring a fair balance between knowledge and protection of sensitive information? Is the technology-related information that is or will be presented in the financial statements or should be considered as an effect of the application of current and/or future IFRS principles, or is it non-IFRS information? In this second case, how are they placed on the balance sheet? To answer these questions, the research is divided into two distinct phases. In this first phase, a qualitative analysis was carried out focusing on the 115 responses from all over the world that were provided to the Discussion Paper Disclosure Initiative — Principles of Disclosure issued by the IASB in 2017 in order to collect the opinions of stakeholders with the aim of improving the quality and usability of financial statements. The results that have emerged show an attention on the part of operators (especially European) both with regard to aspects related to technology, as a communication tool, and to the content of the information to be produced. From a technological point of view, there is increasing attention to digital financial statements and to the links between the documents that replace the annual report, even if there are concerns about how this balance sheet is combined with the traditional one, and doubts are expressed about the opportunity to create links between documents of a different nature and purpose. From a content perspective, there is significant attention to the fact that companies can integrate the information produced with other non-IFRS data, where the issue of costs, risks and opportunities of technology can only have its importance. Even here, however, there is caution on the part of a number of stakeholders for the fear of creating confusion between IFRS and non-IFRS data, since, for example, only the former would be subject to review. Based on the results of this first phase, the conditions are created to be able to move, in a subsequent study, to a second phase focused on an empirical and quantitative survey to be carried out on the financial statements of Italian and European listed companies in parallel with US companies; for the latter, the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) has begun to request specific information on the subject of technology and its risks.